I Count Myself Lucky

In 1972 Ms. Magazine was published for the first time. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was for many years the cornerstone of a grassroots push - equal pay for equal work. In 2014 there remains disparity between women's earnings and men's for the same work. It's a shame.

My personal belief is that women often fail to demand to be paid for their full value. Some women tend to be hesitant to ask for more -- when more is exactly what they deserve. I have always shied away from the pink collar ghettos, work places traditionally dominated by women, and traditionally low paid. When I worked for others, I trained myself to only accept positions where males were my peers so that I could put forth the argument for equal pay for equal work.

As an employee, I have worked as a food server, printing press operator, graphic designer, and most often as a salesperson. As a salesperson, I learned many life lessons.

1. Don't work for crooks. My mama always told me that, but sometimes its hard to know the difference at the outset. But once you know that the organization or boss is not on the up and up, its time to go. If the organization is dishonest they will eventually deceive you. Eventually you will either find yourself caught up in their web of deception or they will turn against you.

2. Demand to be paid for your value. In most companies, it is considered bad form to discuss salary with co-workers. Some work places even demand compliance with this rule right in their company handbook. I never went with that, I always tried to find out what others earned. I asked. Some people will tell you its not your business and are offended, others will just say. Employers don't like such discussions, because they much prefer to keep you ignorant. Sales organizations are usually very open about what everyone is earning, commissions are transparent. If you sell x, you are paid y.

3. Keep your own integrity. Set your own standards. You have to be able to look yourself in the mirror every day. Even if it is the norm in the company to do something you do not approve of, it doesn't mean you have to do it. You may not last very long at that workplace if you refuse to go along to get along. But, who cares? Why would you want to stay at a company that condones poor customer service, shoddy workmanship, unsafe practices, or illegal acts?

4. Follow your heart. Do what you love, and love what you do. I count myself lucky.

5. If you can discover that you are your own favorite boss, I think you'll be a happier person. I think so, but I don't know. If I close my eyes, I imagine that not everyone is cut out to work for themselves. But its hard for me to see it. I understand that some people like the constancy of a regular pay check; prefer to be told what to do; and would rather leave work at the end of the day and forget about it. I live and breathe my work, because I love what I do. I have worked in my own business or self-employed for so long, I know that the financial hills and valleys are just part of the landscape. If a valley is too long and too deep, time to make adjustments, that's all. And I've never been too keen on anyone telling me what to do, how to do it, or when to do it. My attitude was quite irritating to many employers. I am better suited to being my own boss. Are you?

10,000

I know in the big picture, 10,000 hits isn't much. However, this blog just surpassed 10,000, and I want to say thank you for your interest. I try to keep my content relevant. You, my readers, are made up of document preparers, customers, pro se litigants, and people who still believe that America is a great country. Lots of flaws, lots of warts, but great all the same. Thank you for your readership and comments. I receive some emails from individuals thanking me a for a good read. And believe me that means a lot. Writing a blog like this is like shouting into the dark and hoping for an echo.

THANK YOU.

New Online Course - Parental Responsibility

The Florida Association of Legal Document Preparers is proud to announce another course offering that teaches document preparers how to prepare Parenting Plans and the other forms that accompany them. Parenting Plans are required for divorcing parents; unwed parents who are separating; and when there is a major life change in the parents' or children's lives.

Our Online Course - Parental Responsibility includes forms and instructions for preparing Parenting Plans; Supplemental Petition for Modification of Child Custody, Time-Sharing, and Related Relief; Supplemental Petition for Relocation with Minor Children; and other forms related to these court actions.

Introductory Tuition - Only $161.00 - Enrollment Opens 4/5

Please Note - This is not the four hour Parent Education and Family Stabilization Course (Parenting Course) which divorcing parents are required to take; although we offer that course as well - CLICK HERE FOR THE PARENTING COURSE. This Parental Responsibility course is for document preparers to learn how to prepare the forms necessary to file in court for pro se litigants.

Purpose of a Parenting Plan

The State of Florida requires that divorcing parents create a Parenting Plan to be incorporated into their Final Judgment of Dissolution. Likewise, unwed parents who are separating are also wise (though not always required) to create a Parenting Plan. The main reasons to create a Parenting Plan are to define parenting and logistical details concerning the children that may not have been considered; to create an overall guideline for parents to follow; and to ensure that the best interests of the children are upheld. When marriages and relationships fail, all too often, the children are collateral damage. Despite best intentions, without a clear cut Parenting Plan, the children's interests can be lost in the shuffle. The emotionality present during a break up sometimes causes otherwise well meaning parents to act in ways that hurt the children.

The fabric of our lives is woven of minute detail. Day to day activities which families take for granted can become sources of conflict and stress. To some, the Parenting Plans created for pro se litigants which are the subject of this course, are over kill, too many decisions, too much information. However, if making a minute decision in advance can prevent unneeded conflict, the extra time it takes to thoroughly prepare a Parenting Plan, is time well spent.

One of the misconceptions about creating a formal Parenting Plan which leads to some resistance is that a Parenting Plan is completely carved in stone. Generally not true. The Safety Focused/ Supervised Parenting Plan, for important reasons, is designed to be closely adhered to. But, the Regular Parenting Plan; and the Long Distance Relocation Parenting Plan allow for minor changes providing that the parents agree. The court system and family court judges would prefer not to micromanage parents' lives, and would be more than happy if everyone would just get along.

Online Learning

FALDP also offers eight other legal document preparation courses. All of our courses are completely online, and completely self-paced. Although our courses are mainly targeted at document preparers who assist pro se litigants, consumers are welcome to enroll. Membership in FALDP is not necessary to enroll in our courses. However, we invite all Florida legal document preparers to apply for membership in our growing association to take advantage of the benefit of being a part of a group of like minded business people.

Street Crime is Down - White Collar Crime is UP

The good news is that street crime is down. A recent study attributes the decrease in street crime to the fact that people carry less cash nowadays. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper: Less Cash, Less Crime: Evidence from the Electronic Benefit Transfer Program (No. 19996, 3/14) crimes have decreased since the 1990s due to welfare recipients using debit cards instead of receiving checks or paper food stamps. Cash benefits, child support payments, and food stamps are all automatically loaded onto an EBT card, no cash in the process. The abstract for that paper states:

"It has been long recognized that cash plays a critical role in fueling street crime due to its liquidity and transactional anonymity. In poor neighborhoods where street offenses are concentrated, a significant source of circulating cash stems from public assistance or welfare payments. In the 1990s, the Federal government mandated individual states to convert the delivery of their welfare benefits from paper checks to an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system, whereby recipients received and expended their funds through debit cards. In this paper, we examine whether the reduction in the circulation of cash on the streets associated with EBT implementation had an effect on crime."

Attributing the decline in crime to less cash, is a new perspective. Law enforcement and social scientists have explained the decrease in crime in a number of other ways.

One of the reasons often cited for the decline in crime is that we lock up so many people nowadays. According to the Prison Policy Initiative - "Looking at the big picture requires us to ask if it really makes sense to lock up 2.4 million people on any given day, giving us the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world."

Another piece of the puzzle is that we now have far more laws than in the past. People can break a law that they never new existed, and find themselves behind bars. The old saying, ignorance of the law is no excuse, no longer applies. Nobody knows all the laws. According to an article in The Economist:

"The number of federal laws has risen from 3,000 in the early 1980s to over 4,450 by 2008. Many of these have poor intent requirements, meaning people are being locked up not to keep the rest of society safe, but for technical violations of laws they may not have known existed."

If the pace of law creating has continued, then, now in 2014, we have double the number of laws as we did in the 1980s. And we are only counting federal laws. State and local law makers also have to justify their existence by continuing to create and pass more and more laws everyday.

More prisons and jails. Follow the money. The cheapest labor anywhere, even less than third world countries is found right here in America at the Gray Bar Hotel. There are now over 100 private prisons in the United States. Quoting an article about the prison industry in general:

"The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people."

And THAT was the good news. The bad news is that although street crime, crime for cash is down. White collar crime is thriving. The stats presented below are not recent. However, the rate of increase seems to be similar or accelerated since the 1990s. This is an excerpt from a early 2000s article on the National White Collar Crime Center's website (NW3C):

"White collar crime is a term that is applied to nonviolent crimes committed in business situations by individuals, groups or corporations for the purpose of financial gain. Most white collar crimes are associated with some type of fraud, often involving a lending institution, such as a bank or insurance agency.

Examples of white collar crime include: antitrust fraud, bankruptcy fraud, bribery, computer fraud, credit card fraud, counterfeiting, embezzlement, identity fraud, insider trading, insurance fraud, kickbacks, money laundering, obstruction of justice, perjury and price fixing.

White collar crime is steadily on the rise, thanks to our technologically advancing society, which relies on the increased use of cellular phones and computers to access personal and financial information. The National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), a nonprofit agency that supports state and local police in their efforts to prevent, investigate and prosecute economic and high-tech crime, reports that while arrests for violent crimes have decreased in recent years, arrests for white collar crimes - especially fraud and embezzlement - have increased.

The rise in white collar crime incidents has also contributed to a rise in cost to the nation. According to National Fraud Center statistics, the cost of economic crime has risen from $5 billion in 1970 to $100 billion in 1990, and is only expected to increase as occurrences become more frequent. ....

Statistics from NW3C also approximate that one in three households is the victim of white collar crime, yet of these, only 41 percent report the incident. Of the small number reported, only 21 percent are handled by a law enforcement or consumer protection agency."

Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined. Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.

The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year. The savings and loan fraud -- which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" -- cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.

Recent White Collar Crime Stats

The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during January 2014 the government reported 561 new white collar crime prosecutions. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is up 0.5% over the previous month.

The largest number of prosecutions of these matters in January 2014 was for "Fraud-Financial Institution", accounting for 15 percent of prosecutions. Prosecutions were also filed for "Fraud-Other" (15%), "Fraud-Tax" (14.1%), " Fraud-Identity Theft-Aggravated" (13.2%), "Fraud-Federal Program" (9.6%), "Fraud-Identity Theft-Other" (7.8%), "Fraud-Health Care" (6.2%), "Fraud-Other Business" (3.6%), "Fraud-Computer" (2.7%), "Fraud-Telemarketing" (2.1%).

Remember, only a small percentage of white collar crime is even reported. And a scant 21% of the reported crimes are ever prosecuted.

In an article by Ben Steverman "Why Drug Lords and Criminals Are SoRisk-Averse" on Bloomberg.com, "convicted felon Sam E. Antar says stock-picking -- trusting in people and numbers you can’t directly verify -- sets you up as a mark for the unscrupulous. Antar was the chief financial officer of Crazy Eddie, Inc., an electronics chain led by Sam’s cousin, Eddie Antar. The chain collapsed under the weight of its fraud in 1989. “Investors live on hope and it’s the criminal’s job to take advantage of that hope,” Antar says:

'If I wanted to be a scam artist today, I could be very, very successful,” he says. “I’d probably have less risk of being prosecuted and far less risk of going to prison.'

So do you think that the worldwide mortgage crisis is the result of sloppy paperwork? Far more harm is done to consumers by a thief with a briefcase than by an army of purse snatchers.